The American Invasion of Canada

by Pierre Berton

  Now, Stephen Van Rensselaer has set up his headquarters at Lewiston, concentrating his forces here, directly across from the Canadian village of Queenston. This very day. Dr. Eustis, the Secretary of War, has sent an order to Van Rensselaer’s superior. General Dearborn, at Albany: “Considering the urgency of a diversion in favour of General Hull under the circumstances attending his situation, the President thinks it proper that not a moment should be lost in gaining possession of the British posts at Niagara and Kingston, or at least the former, and proceeding in co-operation with General Hull in securing Upper Canada.” Both Eustis and Dearborn cling to the fancy that Hull has been victorious in Upper Canada and that Fort Amherstburg has already fallen.

  In Lewiston, General Van Rensselaer is under no such illusion, though he will not learn of Hull’s situation for several days. There is not much he can do to aid Hull. It is all very well for Eustis to talk of an attack on the Niagara frontier; it is quite a different matter to put his strategy into practice. The British control not only the far shore but also the Niagara River and the two lakes. Van Rensselaer has less than a thousand men to guard a front of thirty-six miles. One-third of his force is too ill to fight. None has been paid. His men lie in the open without tents or covering. Ammunition is low; there are scarcely ten rounds per soldier. There are no heavy ordnance, no gunners, no engineers, scarcely any medical supplies.

  And even if, through some miracle of logistics, these deficiencies were rectified, it is questionable whether the state militia will agree to fight on foreign soil. On July 22, a humiliating incident at Ogdensburg made the General wary of his civilian soldiers. Across the St. Lawrence at Prescott lay a British gunboat. The General’s aide and cousin, Solomon, had planned a daring raid to capture her; he and 120 men would row silently upriver at three in the morning, cross to the Canadian shore, seize the wharf buildings, and attack the ship simultaneously from land and water. At two, everything was in readiness; four hundred men were paraded and volunteers called for, but when only sixty-six agreed to go, the expedition had to be aborted.

  If the troops are reluctant, their militia leaders, with the exception of Solomon Van Rensselaer, are inexperienced. Wadsworth, the militia general, knows so little of war that he has pleaded to be released from his assignment of assembling volunteers: “I confess myself ignorant of even the minor details of the duty you have assigned to me, and I am apprehensive that I may not only expose myself but my Government,” he tells the Governor of New York.

  Stephen Van Rensselaer is himself a militiaman without campaign experience. When the crunch comes, colleagues in the regular forces will refuse to co-operate with him. The irony is that the General is totally and unequivocally opposed to a war that he now intends, as a matter of honour, to prosecute to the fullest-even at the risk of his own reputation. He is a leading Federalist politician, a candidate for governor with a strong following in New York State, and that is precisely why he is here at the head of a thousand men, very much against his will.

  For his appointment he has his political rival to thank-the iron-jawed incumbent, Governor Daniel D. Tompkins, an able administrator and machine politician who is up for re-election the coming spring. As the Republican standard-bearer, Tompkins is as interested in getting his Federalist opponent out of the way as he is in prosecuting the war, and there is little doubt that Stephen Van Rensselaer will be a formidable rival.

  He is the head of one of the first families in New York, and in his name one hears the ring of history. He is the eighth and last patroon of the feudal estate of Rensselaerwyck on the outskirts of Albany, a vast domain close to twelve hundred square miles in size and after almost two centuries still in the hands of the original family. A relic of the early Dutch immigration to America, the General is a Harvard graduate, a farmer, a millionaire, a philanthropist, and, more from a sense of duty than from ambition, a politician. He has served in the state assembly, in the state senate, and as lieutenant-governor of New York. Though he is entitled to feudal tithes, he does not collect them. He is liberal enough to vote against his own class in favour of extending the suffrage. His military training and experience as a militia general are all but non-existent, but that does not bother Governor Tompkins. By appointing his rival to the command of the army on the state’s northern frontier he has everything to gain and nothing to lose-except, possibly, the war.

  Politically, it is a masterstroke. Stephen Van Rensselaer can scarcely refuse the post; if he does he will be discredited in the eyes of the voters. If he accepts, he ends Federalist opposition to the war in New York State. If he blunders, he will undoubtedly be relieved of his command, and that will work against him in the political contest to come. If he performs brilliantly he will not be able to relinquish command and so will pose no political threat.

  He accepts-but under one condition: he insists that his cousin Solomon be his aide-de-camp. For Solomon, in the words of his friend Lovett, “is all formed for war.” Unlike the General, with his pert and amiable Dutch features, the Lieutenant-Colonel looks like a soldier- “the handsomest officer I ever beheld,” in the words of a contemporary. The son of a Revolutionary general, ensign at seventeen, he fought with distinction under Wayne at Fallen Timbers. (Though seriously wounded, he took command of his shattered force and for his gallantry was promoted to major.) For most of the intervening years since leaving the regular army at the century’s turn he has been adjutant-general for the state of New York. Now thirty-eight, he is ten years younger than his commanding officer.

  The two cousins with Lovett form a close triumvirate-”our little family,” Lovett calls it. They can rely on no other counsel than their own, for their politics render them suspect, especially to such fire-breathing War Hawks as Peter B. Porter, chairman of the House committee on foreign relations, who has been appointed quartermaster general for the state of New York. (Porter and his brother are themselves in the contracting and provisioning business and thus in a position to profit from supplying the army, but no one worries about that; the phrase “conflict of interest” has yet to enter the language.) In Albany, Governor Tompkins and General Dearborn show no great eagerness to assist the beleaguered force along the Niagara. Solomon, for one, is convinced that his political enemies are deliberately trying to sabotage him.

  Lovett is determined to keep a careful record of everything that happens (or does not happen)- “the history of every occurrence that can possibly be tortured into a lie”-in the event of later distortions or misunderstandings. He does so in a series of breathless letters to his friend John Alexander, scribbling away at night, even though exhausted from his unaccustomed soldiering. He has neither stamina nor time to scrawl out a sentence to his wife, Nancy; that duty he leaves to his friend: “Tell my good wife, I have not another moment to write, that I am neither homesick, crop-sick, war sick, nor sick of my Wife,” he writes. And again: “Don’t let my wife get alarmed” and “Don’t forget my Wife and Children, nor suffer them to be lonely. Keep their spirits up” and so on. It does not seem to occur to Lovett that the best way to keep up the family spirits might be to send off a letter in his own hand. But then Mrs. Lovett, herself a general’s daughter, prefers to relay her own messages to her husband through their chosen intermediary, Alexander.

  To Alexander, Lovett pours out his own pessimism and despair, which he shares with his two friends, the Van Rensselaer cousins. The war, to him, is foolish:

  “If any man wants to see folly triumphant, let him come here, let him view friends by friends stretched for hundreds of miles on these two shores, all loving and beloved; all desirous of harmony; all wounded by being coerced, by a hand unseen, to cut throats. The People must awaken, they will wake from such destructive lethargy and stupor....

  “What might not the good spirit of this great People effect, if properly directed. History while recording our folly, will dress her pages in mourning, the showers of Posterity’s tears will fall in vain; for the sponge of time can never wipe this blot from the Ameri
can Name....”

  And yet, when the men under his friends’ command refuse to leave the boundaries of the state to attack the British gunboat on the opposite shore, he is “mortified almost to death.” For John Lovett is torn by conflicting emotions. He hates the idea of the war but badly wants to win it. He adjures his friend Alexander not to breathe a word about the defections of the militia lest the news cause further defections. He worries about Hull, hoping against hope that he can hold out, but expecting the worst. His despair over the outbreak of war is accompanied by a despair over his general’s inability to strike a decisive blow against the enemy. To him, this war is “the Ominous Gathering of folly and madness,” yet he deplores the lack of two thousand disciplined troops who, he has been told, are necessary for a successful attack on Fort George, the British post at the Niagara’s mouth.

  He is a lawyer by profession, a bon vivant by inclination, a satirical poet, a dinner wit, an amateur politician. He is good with juries, bad with law, for he cannot abide long hours spent with dusty tomes in murky libraries. He is restless, always seeking something new, changing employment frequently. It is doubtful, however, that he ever expected to become a soldier.

  “I am not a soldier,” he tells his friend the General when he seeks to employ him. To which Stephen Van Rensselaer replies, “It is not your sword, but your pen I want.”

  Now, in spite of himself, in spite of his hatred of war and bloodshed, in spite of his aching back and his head cold, in spite of long hours spent in the saddle and damp days on the hard ground, he discovers that he is actually enjoying the experience. It is for him a kind of testing, and his letters bubble with the novelty of it all.

  “If flying through air, water, mud, brush, over hills, dales, meadows, swamps, on wheels or horseback, and getting a man’s ears gnawed off with mosquitoes and gallinippers make a Soldier, then I have seen service for-one week,” he boasts. And he revels in the tale of how he and his two friends, shipwrecked in a thunderstorm near Sackets Harbor, sought refuge in an abandoned house where he went to sleep in a large Dutch oven, aided by a sergeant of the guard who laid him on a large board and pushed him into its mouth “like a pig on a wooden shovel.”

  He worships the Van Rensselaer cousins (after all he is employed as a propagandist):

  “One thing I can with great truth say; nothing but General Stephen Van Rensselaer’s having the command of this campaign could have saved the service from confusion; the State from disgrace, and the cause from perdition; and nothing could have been more fortunate for the General than the man he has at his elbow, for Solomon in fact and truth does know everything which appertains to the economy of a camp™ Stop:-Away we must all march, at beat of drum, and hear an old Irish clergyman preach to us, Amen. I have become a perfect machine; go just where I’m ordered.”

  •

  LEWISTON, NEW YORK, August 16, 1812. Consternation in the American camp! Excitement-then relief. A red-coated British officer gallops through, carrying a flag of truce. Hull may be in trouble on the Detroit frontier. (He is, at this very moment, signing the articles of surrender.) But here on the Niagara the danger of a British attack, which all have feared, is over.

  Major John Lovett cannot contain his delight at this unexpected reprieve. “Huzza! Huzza!” he writes in his journal, “...an Express from the Governor General of Canada to Gen. Dearborn proposing an Armistice!!!!” The news is so astonishing, so cheering, that he slashes four exclamation marks against it.

  The following night, at midnight, there is a further hullabaloo as more riders gallop in from Albany bearing letters from Dearborn “enclosing a sort of three legged armistice between some sort of an Adjutant General on behalf of the governor general of Canada and the said Gen. Dearborn.” Now the camp is in a ferment as messages criss-cross the river: “There is nothing but flag after flag, letter after letter.”

  A truce, however brief, will allow the Americans to buy time, desperately needed, and to reinforce the Niagara frontier, desperately undermanned, that stretches thirty-six miles along the river that cuts through the neck of land separating Lake Erie from Lake Ontario. At the southern end, the British Fort Erie faces the two American towns of Buffalo, a lively village of five hundred, and its trading rival, Black Rock. At the northern end, Fort George on the British side and Fort Niagara on the American bristle at each other across the entrance into Lake Ontario. The great falls, whose thunder can be heard for miles, lie at midpoint. Below the gorge that cuts through the Niagara escarpment are the hamlet of Lewiston, on the American side, where Van Rensselaer’s army is quartered, and the Canadian village of Queenston, a partially fortified community, overshadowed physically by the heights to the south and economically by the village of Newark (later Niagara-on-the-Lake) on the outskirts of Fort George.

  The Niagara Frontier

  At Lewiston, the river can be crossed in ten minutes, and a musket ball fired from one village to the other still has the power to kill For some time the Americans have been convinced that the British mean to attack across the river. It is widely believed that they have three thousand men in the field and another thousand on call. As is so often the case in war, both sides overestimate the forces opposite them; Brock has only four hundred regulars and eight hundred militia, most of the latter having returned to their harvest.

  New York State is totally unprepared for war. The arms are of varying calibres; no single cartridge will suit them. Few bayonets are available. When Governor Tompkins tries to get supplies for the militia from the regular army, he is frustrated by red tape. From Bloomfield comes word from one general that “if Gen. Brock should attack...a single hour would expend all our ammunition.” From Brownville, another general reports that the inhabitants of the St. Lawrence colony are fleeing south. From Buffalo, Peter B. Porter describes a state bordering on anarchy-alarm, panic, distrust of officers, military unpreparedness. If Hull is beaten at Detroit only a miracle can save Van Rensselaer’s forces from ignoble defeat.

  Now, when least expected, the miracle has happened and the army has been given breathing-space.

  Lieutenant-Colonel Solomon Van Rensselaer, the old campaigner, immediately grasps the significance of the projected armistice, but he faces serious problems. All the heavy cannon and supplies he needs are far away at Oswego at the eastern end of Lake Ontario. The roads are mired; supplies can only be moved by water. At present the British control the lake, but perhaps the terms of the truce can be broadened to give the Americans an advantage.

  The agreement with Dearborn is specific: the British will not allow any facility for moving men and supplies that did not exist before it was signed. In short, the Americans cannot use the lake as a common highway. Solomon is determined to force his enemies to give way; the security of the Army of the Centre depends upon it.

  He goes straight to his cousin, the General.

  “Our situation,” he reminds him, “is critical and embarrassing, something must be done, we must have cannon and military stores from Oswego. I shall make a powerful effort to procure the use of the waters, and I shall take such ground as will make it impossible for me to recede. If I do not succeed, then Lovett must cross over and carry Gen. Dearborn’s orders into effect.”

  “Van,” says Lovett, “you may as well give that up, you will not succeed.”

  “If I do not,” retorts his friend, “it will not be my fault.”

  He dons full military dress and crosses to the British fort. Three officers are there to meet him: Brock’s deputy, Major-General Roger Sheaffe, Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Myers, commanding the garrison, and the brigade major, Thomas Evans. Sheaffe agrees readily to the American’s proposal that no further troops should move from the district to reinforce Brock at Amherstburg; the Americans do not know that most of the needed troops have already been dispatched. But when Van Rensselaer proposes the use of all navigable waters as a common highway, Sheaffe raps out a curt “Inadmissible!” The Colonel insists. Again the General refuses. Whereupon Solomon V
an Rensselaer engages in Yankee bluff.

  “There can be no armistice,” he declares; “our negotiation is at an end. General Van Rensselaer will take the responsibility on himself to prevent your detaching troops from this district.”

  The British officers leap to their feet. Sheaffe grips the hilt of his sword.

  “Sir,” says he, “you take high ground!”

  Solomon Van Rensselaer also rises to his feet, gripping his sword. “I do, sir, and will maintain it.” Turns to Sheaffe and speaks directly: “You do not dare detach the troops.”

  Silence. The General paces the room. Finally: “Be seated and excuse me.” Withdraws with his aides. Returns after a few minutes: “Sir, from amicable considerations, I grant you the use of the waters.”

  It is a prodigious miscalculation, but it is Prevost’s as much as Sheaffe’s. The British general has his orders from his cautious and over-optimistic superior. Brock, contemplating an all-out offensive across the Niagara River, is still in the dark at Detroit.

  The truce, which officially begins on August 20, can be cancelled by either side on four days’ notice. It ends on September 8 after President Madison informs Dearborn that the United States has no intention of ending the war unless the British also revoke their practice of impressing American sailors. By that time Van Rensselaer’s army has been reinforced from Oswego with six regiments of regulars, five of militia, a battalion of riflemen, several batteries of heavy cannon and, in Brock’s rueful words, “a prodigious quantity of Pork and Flower.” As Lovett puts it, “we worked John Bull in the little Armistice treaty and got more than we expected.” Not only has Lewiston been reinforced, but the balance of power on Lake Ontario has also been tilted. General Van Rensselaer, taking advantage of the truce, has shot off an express to Ogdensburg on the St. Lawrence to dispatch nine vessels to Sackets Harbor, a move that will aid the American naval commander. Captain Isaac Chauncey, in his attack on the Upper Canadian capital of York the following year.